


Gonzo Valentine

by Odamaki



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Crossdressing, Drag Queens, Drink Spiking, Gangsters, M/M, No beta reading we go down with our typos yelling, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Rescue Missions, ludicrous situations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-10-29 01:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17798489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: The one where Wufei is No Fun At Parties, temporarily becomes the new Messiah and eventually has a great time when shit goes boom. A.K.A the one where Duo is very definitely NOT going to have to report back to HQ that they accidentally got his partner high and then lost his ass somewhere in the city on the back of a getaway car. Nope, no sir, he can fix this himself. Even in these shoes.In fact, between ghosts, gangsters, drag queens and nuns, it's just a typical Valentine's Day on L2- right?





	1. 11PM - Son of a Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic which is something like the ungodly combination of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Ru Paul's Drag Race, a Scooby-doo/Cowboy Bebop crime caper and a coming out coming of age story. With a happy ending. I don't know how to describe this fic adequately, or justify it, or defend it. It is what it is and what it is, is pretty gonzo. Just try not to think too hard about anything.

_I'm gonna need someone to help me_  
_I'm gonna need somebody's hand_  
_I'm gonna need someone to hold me down_  
_I'm gonna need someone to care_

__________________

There will be snow for Valentines day, the weather station has announced. The idea is to evoke some colony-wide seasonal spirit and to make up for the fact that there was none at Christmas due to the fact that the whole weather system is on the fritz. The announcement is met with indifference, or with irritation. L2 doesn’t do forced jollity, Wufei is discovering. It’s the one thing he really likes about the place.

The bars and clubs, however, are flung wide open in the guarantee that once it starts to come down, people won’t want to go out again, and on L2, a party lasts till sun up.

Duo is absolutely living off it.

Wufei stands squashed against the wall of the club, trying not to touch it. The room is heaving with raucous drinkers, the bass thudding hard. Everything is pink for Valentines, making Wufei feel like he’s slipped into the belly of a colossal strawberry pudding. Duo comes elbowing back across the room towards him, which is both a relief and a whole new horror.

“Here,” Duo says, pushing a glass towards him.

“I asked for coke.”

“I’m not ordering you a soft drink here, they’d laugh me out of town,” Duo protests, thrusting the glass at him. “It’s the closest thing they do.”

It’s orange and red, and has a smell over the synthetic orange that reminds Wufei of the alcohol spray used to sanitize hands in hospitals.

“Just drink your weenie cocktail and try not to look so much like a fucking policeman,” Duo tells him. He pushes the glass into Wufei’s hand and clanks his scotch against it. “And cheer the fuck up!”

“We’re working,” Wufei hisses.

“Please, this is nothing. And relax, nothing's going to happen for hours yet. Just gotta wait for our guy to turn up.”

Wufei gives the juice an experimental sip. There’s something like pineapple in it, and something like watery jam at the bottom. “Just keep your eye out for him. He has-”

“-A tiger tattoo up his neck, I know,” Duo says, losing patience. “Listen, Fei-Wu. It’s a no-brainer, alright. That VIP area is our man’s girl’s favourite Friday night spot. Fact. We know she’s coming tonight, we got the door list. She rang. Fact. And what day is it?”

“Valentine’s…”

“Right, so guaranteed, he’ll show. He’s gotta. All these people, her, he’s got to show his face and make some splash, ok? So all we gotta do is wait. Watch the girl, mark the guy, follow them when they leave. So relax. It’s still early.”

Duo might have a point there. To get through the queues, they’d had to arrive at at opening, and according to Duo, these things don’t even really get going until the small hours. Wufei glances at his watch - not even midnight. and they’ve already squabbled twice and almost rowed once.

The squabbling is nothing new. They are very nearly legendary in the precinct for their petty spats, which occur almost daily. But this whole situation is not Wufei’s idea of how a mission should go at all, and he doesn’t like clubs. It’s too bad they’ve run out of other options, and Duo’s lead is too good to give up.

“I still can’t believe you wouldn’t change,” Duo says, again.

“There’s nothing wrong with this shirt,” Wufei protests. It’s blue. It’s got sleeves. What the fuck could be wrong with it?

“There’s nothing right with it either,” Duo tells him with a snort, but he clocks a change in movement through the crowd and stops, distracted. “I think that’s one of her girlfriends just arrived.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but one way to find out.” Duo pushes a hand into a pocket and flashes a grin, moseying off into the crowd. Wufei watches him go, feeling sour. He hates this kind of work. He hates Duo ponying about, pretending to flirt and often not even pretending. It feels like it should be beneath them. Wufei would rather just crack some heads together and throw some bodies into a van, and call it a day.

He catches a glimpse of Duo as the club lights strobe around the many faces, smiling, and his hand tightens on the glass.

____

Jason Zhang is not aware that he almost shares a name with the man standing by the opposite wall. He's not aware that the guy is with anyone either because by the time he notices him, Wufei is stood there alone without any air of expectation, just the set of a guy fixed on propping the wall up all night.

But his whole life, Jason has been acutely aware of the social hierarchy and his own standing in it. Tonight he's feeling particularly low in the pecking order, but noticing this starched asshole is a timely reminder that he's not yet at the bottom. Jason regards him with the instinctual appetite of a predator. Something like a shrew.

“Check out this _kwasso-ya_ ,” he says, nudging Boomer with his elbow. Boomer looks down on him, both metaphorically and literally, and presently with annoyance.

“Eh?” Jason says encouragingly, nodding his head towards Wufei.

“Some loser,” Boomer agrees. He won’t use Jason’s brand of L2 slang, at least not to Jason. He’s only just about in Boomer’s gang.

“You're not even looking. Who comes to a club on Valentine's alone, eh? What kinda _kwasso_ does that?”

“The real sad shits,” Boomer says, turning back to the Rogan on his left. They're talking dope, and Jason wonders if Boomer is still mad at him about the little spat they had earlier and feels a little mad back. Or maybe Boomer is just being Boomer. He let Jason come with him to the club anyway, so he can't be that mad. Besides, Jason got his baggie fair and square. It’s Boomer who’s acting sore over it.

They never quite fall out over drugs, but Boomer’s only ever got tame ideas for what to do with it, in Jason's opinion. He's too scared of the cops.

‘That's what we're friends for. They need me,’ Jason thinks, perking up. ‘I’m the only brother they got who brings his all to the squad.’

He downs the remains of his Double Snake Fang, considering the sad sack at the wall. It's a cocktail of his own invention - a pint of L2 lager laced with two shots of raw liquor (bartender’s choice so long as it came from the bottom shelf), one of lime sours, and garnished with ketamine on the side. He salutes the dregs at a couple of plastic bottoms as they wiggle by, but the girls ignore him, playing it cool. The hooch hits his stomach like a depth charge, leaving him with a warm glow regarding his fellow man. And he's still got the baggie in his pocket.

“Hey, Boomer, I'm gonna mess with this guy. Someone distract him.”

“Not now,” Boomer mutters, but then he recognises that gleam in Jason's eye and realises it could be a sign of something hilarious down the line. Someone might punch Jason, for example. That was always a laugh. “What you at?”

“Wanna see me slip him a cheer-up?”

Boomer and the Rogan give the mark a once over and conclude that yes they would like to see Jason try anyway.

“I need a distraction.”

“So distract him,” Boomer says, unhelpfully. “Use those tricky fingers you keep bragging about.”

“Fine, yo. Watch me.” Jason slips from his spot, aware of the others watching and takes a dog-leg route towards his mark.

Before going Boomer and his various enterprises, Jason had nearly had a semi-successful career as a croupier. His other passion, beyond his dream of one day being the biggest man in town, was card tricks. It was too bad that they tightened up the casino activity, particularly when it came to crooked dealing, and every other bastard on the neon strip had taken up retro-scams. The pea under the pots, card swizzles and good old fashioned street magic.

It was disappointing.

Drugs was different. There was money in it, and you could have some real fun along the way with the product. And Jason liked some of this new stuff going around. Revs got you sweaty as hell but kept you going long after your thought you’d bust your final nut of the night, and Rapture was a refreshment for the soul, in Jason’s opinion. It was cleaner than the old uppers, although the come-down was worse. This guy already looks tense as hell, though. He could do with something to loosen him up.

Jason considers, picking a pill from the baggie, and fixes on a plan of action. The main thing will be to keep the guy at suitable level of confused and uncomfortable, and not let him swing over into anger. Easy, Jason thinks.

He’s been avoiding people wanting to punch him his whole life.

____

Wufei has one eye on Duo and his ongoing attempt to schmooze his way into the VIP area, and one eye on the door, and the one view is more engrossing than the other. Duo’s got the girl to talk to him, and she’s leaning over the rail of the VIP area in a manner that must be giving Duo something of a view of his own to get lost in.

It’s disgusting, Wufei thinks. And probably a waste of effort. He frets slightly that Duo will go overboard and make himself too conspicuous. More so than he is anyway, and that the girl may tell her friend, who will tell her boyfriend that some guy with long hair was sniffing about asking questions, and that’ll blow the whole operation. If it’s not already down the pan and it even gets anywhere at all tonight.

He’s still fretting when his internal warning system blares and he realises that someone is approaching him.

“My man! It has been too long- gimme some!”

Wufei recoils from the enthusiasm, but manages not to swat the guy away minus his teeth. That might attract attention.

“You’ve got the wrong person.”

“What?” the guy yells, leaning in. “Yo, it’s me, Jace! You was at that ding-dong the other week, man. You remember. Man, you were sick! I’m telling you, so fucking good. Gimmie some!”

“No!” Wufei squirms along the wall, away from the alcoholic exhale and grasp of the stranger. “Fuck off, I don’t know you.”

“What?”

“You don’t know me!” Wufei yells.

“Oh shit, man. I don’t? Aw, fuck, I could have sworn. You sure? With like the-” the stranger clicks his tongue twice, which could mean anything, waggling a finger in the air, and Wufei’s imagination runs riot.

“Definitely not,” he says, cold as he can. His line of sight gives him a solid view of Duo laughing, chit-chatting, neither caring nor aware that Wufei is being hassled. His temper flares a little. He glares. It seems to have about as much effect as punching a sponge.

“Really?” The kid - he’s not much older than Wufei - is sad now, with the kicked look of a disappointed drunk. “Aw really? Aw man, that sucks. Hey, but I’m a cool guy, like, this doesn’t need to be a downer. You wanna-“ He clicks again, nodding his head towards the depths of the club and Wufei’s anger stutters to a halt.

“What?” he says, not even wanting the answer.

“Aw, don’t play. You know.”

The other man see-saws his shoulders to the rhythm of the music, and he does this thing with his eyes and his tongue that Wufei has seen girls do (albeit never at him) and is definitely one of those social messages that’s meant to by-pass the brain and go straight to the pants.

“What?” Wufei barks again, with a prickle of something horribly muddled right up his spine. He’d like to believe it’s fury. It’s easy to find refuge in anger.

But he’s supposed to be better than that these days. More disciplined. Just better. A better warrior. A better agent. “No.”

“Hey, you wanna hear a secret?” the guy says, leaning forwards again.

“No,” Wufei starts to say, and then he stops and looks hard at this waste of meat. His suspicions double. “What is it?”

“It’s a secret, you gotta lean in. I’m not yelling it.”

Reluctantly, Wufei does, eyes clocked sideways, riveted on the idiot face of the man. He doesn’t trust him, but maybe this is their mark’s equivalent of a Maxwell. As soon as he has the thought he trips over the unfairness of it. Duo doesn’t operate the way he does, but he’s a force of nature in his own right, and somehow gets results.

The other man ducks his head towards Wufei’s ear and delivers him a startling message. The belch smothers over the side of Wufei’s whole face, he feels it waft across his eye, big and beery.

Don’t punch him, don’t punch him, do not punch him-

Wufei’s knuckles go white around his forgotten drink, and inside his pocket, where ripping his hand free to wallop this little shit into a concertina would mean ripping half of his trouser leg off, and struggles to be the better person.

“Leave,” he says, with the full force of his anger expressed through a pin-prick. It’s still like punching a sponge. The idiot has already wobbled off, laughing, swaggering. Wufei hisses air through his teeth, fit to burst, and makes an internal promise to come back here one day in his spare time for the sole pleasure of inserting a bar stool up the bastard’s ass.

Or was this a distraction? Wufei throws a glance back over to Duo, but nothing’s changed. Did someone slip in behind him? Too late to tell, if so. He stands there, seething, status quo reinstated. The moron is dancing about a pair of thugs like a monkey, yukking it up. Wufei tenses his shoulders and stares. This time it’s less like hitting a sponge, possibly because he’s angrier and the thugs, though beefier, apparently have some braincells to rub between them. They laugh, rough the ape about between them and push him into the bar.

Sorry, sorry, no harm done.

‘You should be sorry,’ Wufei thinks, dragging his anger away from them and focussing back on the more important matter in hand.

And the pill sinks.

____

_Gimmie a Drink_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Lyrics from S.O.B by Nathaniel Ratcliffe and the Night Sweats  
> 2) L2 slang of my own invention; a glossary:  
> a) kwasso (n) - pseudo Japanese-English term for a loser. Someone whose pitifulness ruins the atmosphere. See also: sadsack, party-pooper, fun sponge.  
> b) kwasso-ya (n) pathetic loser. limp-dick. billy no-mates. A social reject. stronger and more directional than 'kwasso'.  
> c) ding-dong (n) a bar fight.


	2. 12PM - It’s Not For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the pill causes problems, but not as massive as the one that Duo invents for himself.

_Vodka and tonic's my favorite drink_  
_I don't like anything colored pink_  
_That just stinks..._

________

“Come and dance.”

“I don’t want to,” Wufei cuts back, because it sounds better than ‘I don’t know how’. Maxwell’s grin is like a slice of bone in the neon lights; he’s got a whiff of an advantage.

“You’re gonna have to. You’re as subtle as a boil on an asscheek standing here. About as painful to look at. Who was that guy?”

“No one. Some drunk.”

“Oh? Sure?”

Wufei fixes him a looks which concisely expresses his opinion of that kind of question and Maxwell snickers.

“Come and dance. We’re a couple of kids, here to have fun and get lucky. Come on.” He doesn’t pull on Wufei but he bumps the wall next to him with the toe of his big black thug-kickers, like he wishes he could just boot Wufei up the ass and have done with.

As if he fucking could.

“Fine,” Wufei says irritably and shakes his drink back in one swallow with a grimace. The juice slides down in a sickly gulp, but as it passes over the roof of his mouth, something catches. There is a brief, intense bitterness that cuts through the fruit like a shout and then the pressure of his tongue busts the object apart like so much powder and in surprise he swallows.

“Ugh!”

He coughs back into the cup, squinting down into the ice.

“Come on! Hurry up!” Duo yells.

“What did you put in here?”

“What? I don’t know, it’s just juice and shit.”

“What. Shit.”

“Vokda, OJ, that squeezey red shit… think it’s strawberry or something-”

“No. There was something in my drink,” Wufei says, thrusting the glass into Duo’s chest and turning on his heel. He elbows his way through the throng to the men’s room, ignoring Maxwell’s shout and the other patrons’ indignation. Barrelling into the bathroom, it’s already apparent that this is going to be nasty. His fingers are cold and orangey as he shoves them in his mouth, trying to force mind over matter. Except unlike most people he’s schooled his body rigorously not to vomit under anything except nigh unimaginable circumstances, and it’s stubbornly sticking to that creed.

‘Gag!’ Wufei commands himself.

Nope.

He pokes himself again in the back of the throat to no success, and hates the irony. Of all the times and places to confirm that he has next to no gag reflex, it’s here and now.

Duo clatters into the men’s room behind him, still clutching both glasses, and worms his way passed the crowd at the urinals.

“What’s going on?” he demands over the back of Wufei’s head.

“I’m trying to be sick! I need salt water, or something! Get me something!”

“Just stick a finger down your throat,” Duo advises.

“It’s not working! Get salt!”

“What? Fuck. Ok, I’ll go, just- imagine licking the toilet or something,” Duo tells him. He dumps the glasses on the toilet roll holder and darts away.

They’ve attracted a crowd with all their theatrics. Wufei leans on the cistern and eyeballs the bowl of the toilet hard, resolutely ignoring them.

“Hey, kid, you want a mint or something?” someone slurs.

“No. Thank you.” Wufei barks, kicking the door shut in their face in lieu of drawing his gun.

Imagine licking the toilet, Duo had said. There’s a dry shit stain in the bowl. It’s disgusting, but the problem is that it’s not more disgusting than a great many other things Wufei has seen in his time. He imagines putting his tongue on it, and his stomach just obediently shuts down against this kind of torture. Honestly, the shit isn’t even that bad. It’s just shit. Just a smear of nothing.

Duo is taking a while. That’s probably bad news; the drug must be getting into his system and depending on what it is and how much was in the dose, Wufei supposes it’s probably too late for vomiting to do any good now. He’s had alcohol- it’ll mess with that and do weird things to him. He skipped dinner. That’s gotta be strike number three.

Strangely, he feels fine.

Definitely not sick, anyway.

Wufei straightens away from the toilet and goes to wash his hands. He’s drying them when Duo rebounds back in, clutching a salt cellar in one hand and what looks like a shot and a lime wedge in the other.

“Son of a bitch bartender,” he says, flustered. “Are you ok? Did you puke?”

“No, I’m fine,” Wufei says, finding that Duo’s upset seems rather remote and pointless. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I just had to fucking- You don’t know what I paid to get this salt; you said you needed salt!”

“I don’t think the drug effects me, I feel fine. I think I’d know by now if it was going to do anything. Let’s go back and check if the tiger’s here yet,” Wufei says, squeezing past Duo. As he does so, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and he pauses.

‘I look good,’ he thinks with some surprise. It must be the outfit. He tweaks the collar, and the shirt suits him in ways he had never appreciated up until right this moment. Duo was an idiot to dismiss this shirt. He looks great! Wufei takes a second look and then changes his mind. No, it’s not the clothes. It’s him. He just looks good.

“Do you think I look good?” Wufei asks, cutting across Duo’s babble.

“What?”

“Handsome?”

“What?” Duo repeats, stymied, or perhaps just blinded by Wufei’s under-appreciated magnificence. Poor kid. Wufei gives their reflections a brief comparison and concludes that Duo’s cute, but there’s no real competition.

A second little thought creeps in on the first thought’s heels, a familiar one that’s insistent about not considering that sort of thing too closely. It prickles enough to push Wufei away from the mirror.

He strides back into the nightclub, and the prickle ebbs away again. Duo scurries after him. He gets past Wufei’s elbow and bobs in front of him, annoying Wufei by grabbing his chin in one hand and tipping his face towards the flashing lights.

“Get off!”

It hurts a bit - not the grab, just the intensity of the room. The lights are scaldingly bright and colourful; so much so that he’s distracted by the weird patterns they leave ghosting around his retinas.

“Hell…” Duo breaths. “Wufei! Wufei, talk to me buddy; did you swallow all of it?” Duo is pawing at his collar. Wufei shrugs him off, unwilling to be undressed with all these people around him.

“Quit that,” Duo argues, “I’m trying to take your pulse. Shit, I think you got Raptured…”

“I’m fine,” Wufei tells him again. But the lights are getting brighter, even as he says it. “I just need some air.”

“Outside. Yeah, let’s get outside,” Duo says, steering him towards the door. His fingers scald Wufei’s skin through the fabric of his shirt. The slap of winter air sets off a nicer set of fireworks across Wufei’s brain. He takes a deep breath, and immediately feels better; calmer. It’s really quite a nice night out here. Perfect for a walk.

Duo’s blathering on again, messing about with his phone. It’s very bothersome. He’s hooked one hand into the hem of Wufei’s shirt like a child scared of losing his mother. Wufei tows him along. He has no especial plan for where he wants to walk to, but there are lights down the road and out of the wind it’s as warm as a summer night. He has half a mind to ditch both shirt and Duo and just please himself wandering the town.

“Ah, no you don’t,” Duo says, loudly. “Get back here. Sit still. Here, sit on this.”

Wufei’s backside hits the cushiony soft metal of the open flatbed of a truck. Alright, he supposes. He tilts his head back to look at the night sky and the truck gathers him up into a downy nest.

“Fuck,” Duo says, distantly. His face swims briefly over Wufei’s but he’s moving too fast.

“That’s your problem,” Wufei tells him through an elastic mouth. “You go too fast.” He says it a couple of times more, because Duo looks confused, and Wufei’s not sure if he’s saying it in English. Or more likely Duo’s moving so fast the sound can’t get into his ears properly. Wufei gives up. If Duo wants to be deaf, then that’s his bad. Let Duo figure it out for himself.

Sounds wash over him in blasts of colour and thin translucencies. Above him, the stars are reeling. Wufei stares, the ground pushing him skyward as gravity reverses, and the stars fly apart until he’s in the heart of just one of them, in the dark patch where his home was, and there’s the high ringing of lost voices, and blackness; a soft, melting grey-black-green-brown. Wufei closes his eyes to blink, and doesn’t open them again.

___

“Fuck,” Duo says. He waggles a hand over Wufei’s face but the man only blinks very slowly. His eyes are otherwise blown wide open. In the poor light, Duo can’t differentiate between iris and pupil but he suspects that irises have thinned to such a narrow ring that they wouldn’t be visible in good light either.

The drug works fast, Duo realises. Horrifically so. Wufei slurs something in a gobbledegook of his own invention, which worries Duo more than he wants to admit. Maybe the pill was dirty.

“Easy, buddy. You’re gonna be ok,” Duo promises. Not that he really knows what to do.

Rapture is new. It exploded onto the trade less than a year ago, and supply is frighteningly keeping up with the voracious demand. Possibly because it’s so powerful that only a little does the job. Compared to other narcotics, it offers a huge advantage - it’s highly addictive, but you never need more of it. All the old favourites impose on the addict the need to increase the dosage; not so with Rapture. The beginner’s dose is sufficient even for the worst Rapture addict, and the high lasts a good long time. In short, those who really are addicted are enabled to be doped to the eyeballs for longer, for cheaper.

Of course, too much will still kill you. Or the come-down, which is as proportionately abyssal as the high is stratospheric.

Wufei’s going to be a wreck in the morning.

With a cold thrill, Duo looks back to check on his progress, and discovers that Wufei’s blacked out.

“Fuck!”

Was it just a normal fly-by spiking? Where’s the bastard who did it? Or did Wufei get recognised as an agent? Or as himself? Or maybe it’s just Wufei’s insane metabolism causing his body to react badly to it. The man can’t drink without looking like a tomato. Or maybe the pill was dirty...

Panicking a little bit, Duo tidies Wufei’s legs off the pavement and rolls him into the recovery position.

Ambulance? Or HQ? Or Quatre? Duo paces, trying to decide. Fuck, he needs someone way more responsible to deal with this for him. “I am not equipped for this,” he states to the road, and then steps out into it, seeking phone signal, because not only can L2 barely handle weather, it can’t manage 2 fucking bars of signal in some streets either. It takes him a little walk before he can find it.

Before he can make the tossup between gut instinct and protocol, the wail of an alarm pierces through the background hubbub on the street.

“What?” Duo says to himself.

‘What’ transpires to be more urgently a ‘where’ and a ‘who’. Men come running, arms and guns and loot flapping.

“What the fuck?” Duo says to the street in general, the crowd at the nightclub glance over at the noise, and then away.

“Hey!” Duo yells to the bouncers, gesturing to the problem. Like the crowd, they stare resolutely in every direction except his. Oh, so this is local business? It seems amateur enough, but suddenly it doesn’t matter that there’s been a robbery, or who these three men are, because Duo’s realised with a sudden brutal lurch that they’re not just running down the street, they’re running straight to the truck.

The truck with Wufei still conked out on the back.

“Whoa!” Duo yells. “Hold it!”

One of the men pauses a split second to look at him. Like an idiot, he’s pulled his mask up ready to jump in the truck and Duo gets a good look at him, before he ducks into the cabin and the engine snorts loudly to life.

“Preventer! Stop right there! Don’t you fucking drive off,” Duo yells, pulling his gun, and putting his heels to the floor. The truck squeals off in a defiance of red tail lights, leaving Duo running afterwards. One of the men sticks a face out the window briefly, and Duo catches the disbelief when he turns back to the driver and complains ‘What’s a fucking cop doing here? We paid.’

“I got your plates! I got your faces, you motherfuckers!” Duo roars after them, but the truck merely rocks around the block into the next street. “Fuck!”

Gun up, head down, Duo pumps his legs and wishes there were less people around so he could shoot out the tyres. Once around the corner, he gears himself up to try it anyway - people are smart, they scrabble off once the guns start popping - only then he runs into one of them.

A flurry of little bits of paper goes up like a snowstorm along with her shriek of outrage. Duo has a brief understanding of having hit a body built like a wall, of long hair and bright teeth and a colossal bosom. He manages a split second of empathy, to appreciate that from her perspective she was nearly ploughed over by a truck and then turned to find a man with a gun running into her, and then her fist cracks into the top of his skull like a sledge hammer and it all goes black.

___

Somebody Put Something In My Drink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from 'Somebody put Something in my Drink' by the Ramones (covered by The Meteors).


	3. 1AM - Our of Your Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the truck boys come up with an innovative solution for Wufei and Duo gains some unexpected allies

_Now it's time to fly_   
_Out of your mind_   
_And into the sky_   
_With me_

* * *

 

The gangs of L2 can brag a biodiversity of criminals the likes of which can be found nowhere else on Earth, or off of it. It is egalitarian, welcoming of the whole gamut of illegalities humanity has ever invented and like a shadowy Roman empire, it has simply consumed whatever has come into its clutches and rebranded it as something of it’s own. L2 has big shots and low-lifes, scam artists and conmen, grifters, drifters, pimps and pushers, hackers, safe-crackers, traffickers and thieves. Its members undertake wet work, sex work, laundering, champerty and good old-fashioned stick-ups.

They fill a spectrum from high-tech to low-tech, rich to poor and smack bang in the middle of it all fits Cash’s gang.

Their specialty is strong-arming. Not big enough to rub shoulders with the top dogs, Cash nevertheless maintains a historic claim to a key stretch of the colony, and has brown-nosed enough to keep it. Soldiers in the ever shifting war against the authorities and each other, Cash operates his gang like a little army of general mischief makers, ensuring that the big boys can get their goods from A to B, extoll payback, and annoy each other with the ease and efficiency Cash can provide. Whether that’s a baseball bat to the back of the head or the arson of a warehouse is up to the limits of Cash’s small imagination.

But kidnapping is typically not their style.

The truck junkets along out of the main drag into the sad deterioration of the old residential quarter. It’s construction never completed, it’s now nominally awaiting demolition, but has been quietly rotting away for years untouched. With the short memories of the desperate, the poor moved back in after the homeless and the rats, and then with the opportunism native to them, so did the thugs.

Rumbling to a halt, secure in the knowledge that police don’t come in this far (too many traps, too many fat handshakes), the gang fall out, stretching and satisfied and pumped up with victory.

The first rounds the end of the truck and then cat leaps to one side in alarm with a yell.

“Holy hell, we gotta body!”

The others come to look and, jostling, establish it isn’t dead through the tried and tested method of pulling its ear. The body goes ‘arghh…’, but not very loudly.

“The hell did we pick this up? Pearly, you see this bird land?”

La Perla, the jumpy one, shrugs. “Hell no. Wasn’t there when we left.”

“No fucking joke,” the third answers. “Go call Polly.”

“Wasn’t there when we left, for sure,” La Pearla repeats, shaking his head and ambling away.

The third rubs at his jaw consideringly, and then says, in a deep, measured voice. “That pig… was very close to our ride. Keen, you might say.”

“Right, Mr. John,” says the second. “I reckon you’re right.”

“You recognise that pig, Floros?” Mr. John says, raising an eyebrow.

“Nope. New pig.”

“Said ‘Preventer’.”

“Ah, Polly won’t like that.”

Polly did not like that. He was pleased enough with the news that their rival Cruz now had a smoking mess of gunge where he’d previously had a tidy stash of opium, but he was not thrilled by the souvenir they’re brought back. He expresses it with all the bombast of a small ugly man raised on L2 with such a name might.

“It won’t be a problem,” Mr. John says, once the first tirade is over. “We’ll doctor the truck. We had masks on. He won’t find us given that he never saw our faces.”

“I mighta…” La Perla says, very low. “I mighta heard him say something about like he knew us…”

Mr. John turns to him. There is a long pause in which Mr. John exudes threat and Polly gulps in air like a free diver about to go in deep.

“I want you,” Polly says, bloated with rage. “To take that fucking tick you’ve picked up and deal with him.”

“How?” La Perla ventures, a man incapable of standing in front of a big red button and not pressing it.

Polly explodes, thumping on the table. “For the love of Jesus fucking Christ, just get rid of him! Take him to the fringe and clean him up! Ahhh! Go! And then find that fucking cop! You, you’re fucking responsible, you old fuck,” he adds, jabbing a finger at Mr. John. “Don’t make me have to tell Cash.”

Closing a fist around the collars of the other two men, Mr. John breaks his face in two on either side of a thin smile.

“I’ve got it in hand,” he growls.

____

They drive out, La Perla crouched in the flatbed, Floros at the wheel, Mr. John drumming anxiously in the passenger seat. “I’m too old for this shit…” Mr. John mutters. He rubs at his eyes. “You two are going to be the death of me.”

“Sorry, Mr. John.”

“This do?” Floros asks, peeling them off the road into an empty lot, and killing the lights.

“This’ll do.” Mr. John gets out, and they convene at the tail of the truck.

“Ok. La Perla, you useless shit. Get him off the truck and clean him up.”

La Perla rolls Wufei with a thud into the dust and then pauses, blinking at him, “Clean up? How ‘clean up’?” he asks.

“‘Clean up’ as in clean him up. Just like Polly told you to do. Do I have to spell it out?”

“Aww hell, I dunno,” La Perla says, his face creasing up.

Mr. John can’t believe his ears. “What do you mean, you don’t know? That guy from The Roads; you scrubbed him.”

“Yeah, I scrubbed that Roadie bastard, but come on...” La Perla makes a wordless gesture towards Wufei.

Mr. John advances, hand outstretched. “You scrubbed one guy, you can scrub another guy - so scrub this guy! What’s the problem, exactly?”

“I dunno,” La Perla says again, jostling around the truck out of reach. “I dunno, man. War’s over.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Just, war’s over. I mean, on the job’s one thing, and some guy comes at me, talking shit anyway? Sure I’m gonna pop him, but look at this mooch. Could you do it?”

Together, all three of them look at the mooch. Wufei worms slightly against the floor, eyes blown wider than the starry sky. Mr. John, who has happily stomped, kneecapped, and bludgeoned his way through the last five decades has to admit that he could not. He has never murdered a civilian in cold blood. It’s something that’s really held him back in his career.

“See? He’s cooked!” La Perla exclaims, catching a whiff of sentiment from the older man. “I can’t shoot a man already down, thinking he’s halfway to the moon, bro. That’s just… that’s war shit. Nasty war shit. I always said I wasn’t doing that.”

“Floros, are you hearing this philosophy lesson?”

“It’s a cold thing, man. Shooting some dummy in the back of the head,” Floros says, shrugging. “I reckon Polly’s over-reacting. Chump doesn’t know which way is up. Doubt he’ll remember his own name when he sobers up, never mind anything else.”

“Polly does tend to go over…” La Perla adds, hovering at Mr. John’s elbow.

“Hey chump,” Mr. John says, shoving Wufei’s shin with his toes. “Where are you?”

“Space,” Wufei says, blinking with a two second delay.

“Alright, fine. We’ll dump him,” Mr. John declares. “Professore, have you got a problem with that?”

La Perla shrugs, gusting a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Mr. John. Where we gonna dump him? The dump?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. John grouches. “You think of somewhere. And none of you tell Polly we didn’t clean him the way he wanted.”

“There’s the penguins,” Floros pipes up, leaning on the truck. “You know, down in the big box chapel? It’s about four blocks over. We could chuck him there.”

“Why not? Let’s go another block and give him right over to the Preventers. ‘Excuse me sir, picked up a stray of yours, thanks a bundle’.”

“Aww, no, it’s quiet,” Floros says. “Dump’s got guard dogs in, and churches don’t. It’s a safe bet. Next thing this guy knows he’s eating oatmeal and doing a hail Mary, musta just wandered in during the night like the other bums. ‘Sides, it’s a snow night. They’ll have left the doors unlocked. Charity.”

“Alright. Enough. Let’s just get shot of him before Cash gets here, and finds out from Polly how badly we fucked up.”

“Get his legs Pearly.”

They toss Wufei back into the truck.

“Penguins,” Mr. John repeats to himself, clambering into his seat. “That’s actually some good thinking, Floros.”

Floros twists the key and flicks his cigarette butt into the weeds, where it glows like a tiny star and then dies. “Thanks. Empty lot reminded me of it. Believe it or not, used to be a church there…”  
___

The church is a stale building all in grey, mourning for something and simultaneously so austere you can’t imagine it’s ever found any love.

The door is propped open, but the nuns aren’t stupid. Entering, Floros and La Perla find a municipal chamber of metal benches bolted to a solid stone floor, and nothing else that could conceivably be stained or carried off.

“Jesus Christ,” La Perla says on the site of it.

“Don’t fucking blaspheme; this is a church.”

“No, I mean, up there.”

They look up. Hanging on steel spokes above an altar like a butcher’s slab, is Jesus Christ himself, face turned down towards it in anguish, weeping, the blood oozing from his wounds. Floros shivers out the creepy feeling down his spine, but La Perla appears to be rejuvenated by the horror movie quality of the statue.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly eager, “Let’s put him on that box there.”

Floros shrugs and together they heave Wufei up onto the bare alter, where he makes for a weird if not picturesque sacrifice, with his hair bleeding free of his ponytail onto the white stone. He hums, the sound eerie in the big empty space.

“What’s he on, d’you reckon?” La Perla asks.

Floros gives Wufei an expert once over, dragging his thumb down under Wufei’s eye. “It’s an upper,” he concludes. “Maybe Flick, maybe that new shit.”

“Revs?”

“Nah, no sweats. And he’s too happy.”

“You really think he’s gonna wake up blank, though?” La Perla worries. “What if he don’t? What if he remembers us? The club? I’ve done Flick; sometimes the memories just come back like whoosh!”

“Easy, Pearly. I don’t think we’ve got much to worry about, but I tell you what, how about I slip him a little of the old Mexican?” Floros feels in the lining of his pocket, extracting a slim baggie. “Let’s give him a nice blue. Little bitter one…lot of kick…”

“Smart thinking!”

“Hold his jaw for me.”

The plastic pill case opens with a crack between Floros’ fingers and the powder trickles out into the hollow of Wufei’s cheek.

“Mmnyah…” Wufei says, smacking his tongue like a dog eating molasses. As a courtesy, La Pearla slips him a breath mint just for kicks.

“That’s should fix him,” Floros concludes, patting Wufei’s cheek. “Say, roll his head to face the cross. That should give him the heebies enough; he can rant about how Jesus took him for a ride in a car all the way to church.”

So saying, they leave Wufei laid out beneath the cross.

Mr. John puts out his cigarette and beckons them over as they emerge from the church.

“I’ve been thinking. That cop ran into that pinkie when we lost him. A really pink pinkie at that. Pearly, any ideas who that might be? Big girl.”

“Sure,” La Perla says easily. “Down that end of the strip, it’s gotta be either Amanda or Bubble Regan. No other muscle round there. Ain’t to anyone’s taste.”

“They work with your Pa?”

“Hell no, and don’t talk to me about my Pa. No, they’re with Hugh. Y’know him. Your age. Owes us cash. Owes Cash.”

“Alright,” Mr. John relents. “Let’s go back to the strip. Get a drink and then call up some girls.”  
___

“I was advertizing,” the woman insists, her voice sliding in an out of Duo’s ears, now fuzzy, now clear. “He came out of goddamn nowhere, what was I supposed to do?”

“Only you would clock a fella and then bring him home.”

“Only way she’d gets a man.”

“Oooh!”

Laughter. Bright and loud. It rattles around Duo brain like bongo drums, and he groans, feeling at his head.

“Shit, hon, are you waking up?”

“Don’t whack him again.”

“I wasn’t gonna!”

“Can I tap him?”

“Bitch you already got handcuffs, you do not need a whole damn cop to go with ‘em. One of you get him some water or something.”

Duo blinks through a haze of colours, all of them, it seems. Rose pink and teal, and lime green, and black. “Ow,” he announces, and the colours rearrange themselves into a coherent collection of bodies and faces, but things make no more sense. “Where am I?”

There’s a click-clack of heels on the floor and a fifth woman appears, tripping along holding a glass. “Here, sugar,” she says, holding it out in front of Duo’s face. Her nails are an inch long, and they sparkle crimson, and then her face floats into Duo’s focus like a flag of surrender through a cloud of dark hair. “The faucet’s bust,” she says, with a Hollywood smile. “So I shook you out a little vodka tonic. I hope that’s ok.”

“Uh,” Duo manages. “Ok.”

“Thanks, Zizi,” the teal queen says, uncertainly.

Any port in a storm, Duo guesses, giving the drink a cautious sip. It fizzes right to his head and does the job in that it’s so strong it slaps some sense back into him. “Ok, I need answers.”

There’s a collective inhale, precluded by the woman in teal, who waves her hands and brings some kind of order to the rabble with a cry of ‘Hush, bitches!’

“Ok,” she says, turning to Duo with a very reasonable tone. “I’m Hugh, this is our nightclub. First thing, there was a little misunderstanding. Our girl Amanda didn’t appreciate that you weren’t going for her with the gun.”

“Hi,” says the woman in rose, and then Duo has to really look again, and then gently the cogs fall into place.

“You were in the street,” he says, pointing at her.

“I was leafleting for our show,” Amanda says, and Duo recalls the rain of paper. He remembers the very solid bosom. The smiles on the faces around him go a little tight. “And you came round the corner, and I kind of panicked when I saw the gun, cause I thought maybe you were one of Polly’s boys, and we kind of owe them a little so I sort of… bopped you one on the head.” She makes a little kitten like motion with one fist, but the fist is roughly half the size of Duo’s head.

“At any rate,” says Hugh. “We didn’t know you were a cop.”

“I’m a Preventer,” Duo corrects, even though it’s all the same in this part of town. “And uh…Ok you brought me here. I’m here and…Oh no… Do you know where that truck went?”

The heads shake, and the hair all rotates with them, as fixed as the smiles.

“See… Now I think you do,” Duo says, putting the glass down. “This is serious. My partner was in the back of that truck.”

“Oh well, he’s dead then,” says the queen in black, even as other hands creep towards mouths.

Hugh turns on her. “Rachel? The actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m just sayin’! Anyone in the know coulda told you Cash and his boys was doing business tonight against Mr. Cruz and his boys. No good being stupid about it.”

“Look, I just need to know where they were headed.”

Doubt swaps from one face to another. “I mean… they’d be going back to Polly, I guess, but I couldn’t say exactly where,” Hugh says. “They moved around.”

Duo rubs at his nose, trying to piece things together. Cash and Cruz. He knows those names. Or at least, they’re known to Preventer. Medium sized crooks compared to the quarry Duo tends to chase after, both gangsters deal mainly in sharking and drug peddling. Preventer doesn’t bother to clean them up only because they have a habit of causing each other more trouble than they cause anyone else. And it’s not in their jurisdiction, anyway. That’s for the actual cops to handle. If it’s not threatening the Earth Sphere more comprehensively, then it’s not Preventer business.

“Mama Pearl could, couldn’t she?” Zizi says, cutting into his thoughts. She flutters a hand to Duo, blinding with red sequins. “Isn’t that Pearl in Polly’s gang one of hers?”

“Mama Pearl won’t talk to any cop,” Hugh replies flatly. “Listen, we’re just a little group of girls here, Mister. I’m sorry, can you see it’s too dangerous?”

Duo stops feeling at his throbbing head and manages to scrape up a grin for them. “Sure, I can see that. But I’ve gotta get my guy back too.” There’s a wince of romantic sympathy amongst the group and Duo hastily adds, “He got raptured, and I’m basically responsible for what happens to him now. Let me get this straight. We’ve got two gangs on this patch, Cash and Cruz? Cash has some beef against Cruz and sends his guys to cause some trouble for them, I stupidly dump my partner in the back of the getaway truck. But you said ‘Polly’. Who’s she? You know these guys?” Must be a minion, he guesses.

Rachel says, “We don’t like ‘em.”

Hugh adds, “Polly’s a guy who works with Cash, and we owe them money. We’re trying to keep our heads down.”

There’s a click clack of heels and another girl appears, tall and thin in bright yellow. “Hey, we just got the weirdest call asking…Oh. Hello.” She blinks at the sight of Duo and pauses, and then she says, “Oh, so that’s what he meant. Aw, shit.”

“What’s ‘aw, shit’?” Duo and the teal queen ask at the same time.

“So I’m sitting down in the booth and the phone rings and I answer and this man says, ‘Hello, who am I talking to,’ and I say, ‘You’re talking to Mizz Liza Laydee, what can I do for you?’ and he says, ‘Good evening Mizz Liza, I’m calling to ask if you or your ladies have seen a man,’ so I think he’s a crank and say, ‘Do you know who you’ve called?’ and he says ‘I’m looking for a man’,” Mizz Liza pauses to inhale, checking her audience, and then plunges on.

“So then I reply, ‘Well mister, we don’t do that kind of work. We entertain. Look with your eyes, not your hands please.’ But then he says, ‘He’s got long hair; natural. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone like that tonight?’ and I said, ‘Well we’re not open yet, but if we had a real man here with long, natural hair, I’m sure I’d have noticed,’ and then he said, ‘Ok, well this is Mr. John, and I’m going to drop by your place on my way back and ask you that again,’ and then I was like ‘OH!’ so I said, ‘Mr. John, if this is about the money’, and he said ‘No, Mizz Liza, this is just about the man. Though if you find him for me, we might be able to talk about the money’, and then he hung up, and then I came up here and well… yikes,” she concludes, gesturing to Duo with both hands. “Moral quandary.”

All eyes swivel on him.

“I’m a cop,” Duo reminds them quickly. “HQ knows I was here.”

“Oh shit,” says Hugh. “Well Mr. John cannot know you were here. You’ve got to go. We need to get you out of here, stat.”

“Back door?”

“I’m afraid our place has six back doors, and we’re all sitting on ‘em.”

“Ah,” Duo says, once he’s got the picture. “Ok, front door then.”

Mizz Liza flutters, “No, no, we’ve got people already waiting outside for the show, there’s like twenty people out there; you’ll walk straight past a parade of witnesses.”

“Window?”

“This is a basement…”

Duo sits back feeling the situation close on him like a rat in a trap and takes a deep breath, because there’s gotta be some way out, and then before he can put his mind to it, Zizi suddenly brightens, turning that big old Hollywood smile on him.

“Say,” she asks, “What’s your shoe size?”

* * *

 

_Buzz buzz buzz buzz_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics come from Peter Cook & Dudley Moore's 'The L.S. Bumble Bee'. 
> 
> L2 Slang:  
> 1) A pinkie (n) - 'Pink Bar' worker; anyone who works in the drag, peep show, exotic dancers or sex-peripheral work.   
> 2) Old Mexican (n) - synthetic drug designed to resemble mescaline (naturally found in peyote and San Pedro cacti), a powerful hallucinogenic causing increased heart rate and agitation.


End file.
